In 1926 the most famous man on earth stood on a New York hotel roof learning to box from Jack Dempsey, determined to fight a newspaper editorial that had blamed him for a pink talcum powder dispenser in a men’s restroom. This episode traces Rudolph Valentino from a naval academy rejection in Italy, through a first-class steamship bluff with a fake family crest, to sleeping on Central Park benches and working as a taxi dancer in New York cabarets.

The discussion covers the high-society divorce scandal that drove him west, the typecasting that made him a screen villain until screenwriter June Mathis insisted he lead The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the tango craze and The Sheik, his one-man strike against a 350-dollar weekly salary, and the United Artists contract that gave him creative control. It also examines his chaotic marriages to Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, the bigamy arrest, the cultural backlash against his brand of masculinity, his death at 31 from a perforated ulcer, and the riotous funeral that birthed modern parasocial mourning.

• How taxi dancing taught Valentino to sell romance without words, a perfect training ground for silent film
• Why D.W. Griffith dismissed him and how his subtle, intimate style broke the mold of theatrical silent acting
• The strike, the open letter, and the nationwide dance tour that funded his fight with the studios
• Post-World War I anxieties about manhood and the pink powder puff editorial that haunted him to his deathbed
• Hired fascist guards, staged fainting spells, and the woman in black: how PR stunts became a century of ritual mourning